The answer is that every single thing in that list is an example of market rigging, fraud, or both.

How are we supposed to make decisions in today’s rigged and often fraudulent market environment? Where should you put your money if you don’t know where the risks lie? How does one control risk when control fraud runs rampant?

Unfortunately, there are no perfect answers to these questions. Instead, the task is to recognize what sort of world we happen to live in today and adjust one’s actions to the realities as they happen to be. The purpose of this report is not to stir up resentment or anger -- although those are perfectly valid responses to the abuses we are forced to live with -- but to simply acknowledge the landscape as it is so that we can make informed decisions.

In this report I connect the dots on the fraud, noting both what we already know about and what we'd better prudently suspect is happening (but not yet revealed). In Part II, we talk about ways to operate, make decisions, and control risk given the sorry state of affairs in our financial markets.

Swimming Naked

As Warren Buffet said, "It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked."

What he meant was that poorly-run companies can appear healthy during boom times but are later exposed as hollow shells when the economic tide retreats. Naturally it's a lot easier to make money when times are booming, but much more difficult when the economic pie is stagnant or shrinking. The dot-com companies of the late 1990s are the poster children for this phenomenon.

My corollary to Buffet’s naked swimming quote is this: It’s only when the pie stops expanding that you find out who’s been running a Ponzi scheme.

The global pie is no longer expanding, and the relentless parade of disquieting economic and financial news can be laid right upon that fact.

Sure, there are the prosecutable examples, such as Bernie Madoff, but state and municipal pensions and the Social Security entitlement program also fit the definition. So does the practice of expanding public debt at a faster pace than GDP, which many nations, provinces, and states have done for many years running. These are all Ponzi schemes in the sense that they require constant growth to remain 'healthy' (or hidden, more accurately) and are therefore mathematically certain to fail. Now that the economic pie is no longer growing like it used to and most likely will not for decades to come (if ever), all of these schemes are rapidly falling apart.

The insolvency of Greece, which is now in a full-bore depression, is simply a reflection of a multi-year Ponzi scheme that has now run its course and fallen apart. It is simply not possible to borrow forever at a faster rate than your income growth, and Greece is now a harbinger of things to come for every country in a similar position. That includes all of the PIIGS, Japan, and the US.

Now that the pie has stopped expanding, all of the countries that have been swimming naked are exposed. Timing will vary, as in this metaphor some were in shallower water (Greece) than others (the US), but timing aside, there really isn't much of a difference between any of them.

Illegal and Condoned Fraud

Where does one even begin with a discussion of all of the rampant fraud that has been revealed of late? Should we suspect that there is suddenly a lot more fraud in the system? Or is the lack of growth simply revealing the extent to which fraud and Ponzi schemes are a significant feature of our political-financial-regulatory-banking landscape? I lean towards the latter view.

I suppose we need to begin this discussion with the fact that any exponential, debt-based monetary system is, at its very core, a Ponzi scheme. It simply has to keep expanding so that there’s enough money and credit manufactured today to meet yesterday's principal and interest loads. Without endless growth, sooner or later the debt pile collapses, and truly extraordinary losses are taken by somebody.

If our entire money system is itself a Ponzi scheme, then it follows that much of what will be based on that monetary superstructure will, almost by definition, share that characteristic.

The garden-variety illegal schemes, such as those run by Bernie Madoff and Peregrine Financial, are easier to cover up and keep running when money and credit are readily available and expanding rapidly. Their early demise just means that they were in the weakest positions and therefore unable to survive the first rounds of crediting/money stagnation.

Next in line is the practice of borrowing at a faster rate than economic growth. That process is already well underway for Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal -- but just barely. An enormous gap exists between any practical level of funding and the desired levels of spending, and closing that gap will be a long and painful process.

Following this will be the state-sponsored schemes. Woefully underfunded pensions and entitlement programs will take longer to unravel, but it will happen too in one form or another, most likely by cutting benefits.

The simple truth is that when credit and money expansion stops, all of the various schemes that relied upon the illusion of growth supplied by that dynamic are exposed as unworkable propositions. One summary of the current crisis is this: Credit growth stalled and there simply wasn't enough 'juice' left in the system to cover the various 'legal' and illegal Ponzi schemes.

Socially speaking, as long as the pie is expanding, there is virtually zero public or political support to call out the schemes for what they are. If anything, the opposite is true. It is only once some limit to growth is reached -- the most recent case being the bursting of a multi-decade credit bubble in 2008 -- that the party ends, heads groggily lift, and the painful lack of standards and critical thinking are finally revealed.

The fraud has always been there, often in plain sight, but very few really cared as long as the status quo was being maintained. Obviously and mathematically unworkable municipal and state pension plans are a prime example of this dynamic. For as long as the fiction could be maintained, very few challenged the system, even though they were quite obviously going to be an eventual fiduciary train wreck.

The recent spate of municipal bankruptcies indicates that the ‘eventual’ train wreck has begun and the first few cars of a very long train are off the rails.

Officially Supported Fraud

As bad as the private frauds are, and as corrosive as they are to public trust, they pale in comparison to those perpetuated at the very highest levels. The fact that some frauds are supported and encouraged by the regulatory bodies and official institutions should render them no less palatable to the rational mind. In fact, the opposite should be true.

Recently it has become clear that various regulatory bodies can be counted on to look the other way when certain frauds are aligned with the aims and goals of the state while punishing other frauds selectively and grudgingly. There are many recent examples to support this view.

The LIBOR scandal is a perfect example of regulators ‘looking the other way when it suits us.’ Because a LIBOR rate that was manipulated to inappropriately low levels created the appearance of robust bank health, the Fed and other central banks and regulatory authorities were more than happy to look the other way. Not just briefly, but over many years.

That the manipulation of LIBOR also happened to pad the profits of big, well-connected banks (another prime goal of the central authorities) was just one more reason to tacitly support the manipulation. It’s important to note that LIBOR was and is the main determinant for the rate of interest paid on tens of trillions of loans and hundreds of trillions in derivatives.

If the central authorities are willing to overlook fraud on that scale, how far are they willing to go in other areas? Asked another way, just how serious is the predicament we face, and what are we not being told?

The painfully clear message from all of this is that lying, cheating, and stealing are all just fine, as long as they support the main policy aims of the times (and perhaps a few current or prospective colleagues). That is a main lesson of LIBOR-gate, and it is ugly.

Which Brings Us to Gold

One of the prime reasons that I support the notion that the price of gold is neither free nor fair is that I think there is an incentive for the US and UK central banks (and the others, too) to have no serious questions raised about fiat money. Gold is the only monetary barometer that exists outside of the world of fiat money.

If the Fed was willing to look the other way while banks colluded to keep LIBOR artificially low because that sent the 'right' signal about bank health and boosted profits, do you really think they would not also look the other way if banks could make money by manipulating the gold market into a more stable or even lower price band than it otherwise might occupy?

To me, it is a given that the Fed, et al., would condone literally any and all activities that would boost the apparent health of major banks (their prime clients) and the apparent health of fiat money (their only product). Said more directly, it is unthinkable that they do not have gold squarely in their sights on a daily basis.

The second point I want to make about gold is that with every revelation of fraud and/or price manipulation, I grow more convinced that gold should play an increasing role as an anchor to your portfolio. The lessons of LIBOR-gate suggest a haphazard approach to enforcing the rules and reinforce the idea that perhaps things are a bit worse off under the surface than we’ve been told.

Beyond the regulatory and process lapses (like the oil trading story below) that contribute to both illegal and sanctioned fraud, the most grotesque mispricing of everything begins with the mispricing of money itself. Thanks to three years of money priced at zero percent, the entire system is riddled with distorted prices, especially the price for risk. For example, virtually every pension fund is now essentially forced to lend money to the US government for ten years at 1.5% interest, a ridiculous rate given the risks of inflation and even default that a free market would price very differently.

A final thought here is that we simply cannot trust the prices we see around us as much as we used to. I know that one of the central axioms of traders and reasonable people everywhere is that the market is always right. If the price of gasoline is $3.50/gallon or the price of gold is $1,550/ounce, then those are the correct and right prices.

However, it now seems likely that most of the prices we see are simply reflections of something at once more mundane and sinister: central planning. First they are distorted by the pernicious effects of mispriced money, and second by selective lack of enforcement.

An Unfortunate Lack of Accountability

The many years that Bernie Madoff was able to continue his fraud despite ample and clear proof supplied to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), coupled with the complete lack of consequences for the named regulators known to have actively ignored the evidence, tell us simply that above certain levels, accountability has all but disappeared.

Can anyone provide a compelling reason why Jon Corzine is not behind bars or charged with something…anything?

Most recently, the SEC declined to press charges against Goldman Sachs for their role in misleading clients about the riskiness of the toxic mortgage products they manufactured and sold.

(MoneyWatch) The Securities and Exchange Commission has ended an investigation intowhether Goldman Sachs misled investors in a $1.3 billion sale of residential mortgage-backed securities arranged by the investment bank in 2006, shortly before the housing crash.

The agency notified Goldman in February that it was looking into whether the company misrepresented the riskiness of a mortgage deal dubbed "Fremont Home Loan Trust 2006-E." Goldman disclosed in a regulatory filing Thursday that the SEC does not intend to recommend any enforcement action against the company over the deal.

If ever there were a more open and shut case, I would be hard pressed to imagine what it might be. The rules over financial disclosure are quite clear, and everything I understand about Goldman's actions in selling these securities crossed that line. Recall that in some cases Goldman was packaging these things specifically so that one client (John Paulson) could short them, while selling the other side of the deal to someone else, while failing to disclose that these particular items had been designed to fail.

Further, in 2010 Goldman paid a $550 million fine to settle federal charges that it misled investors and that a Congressional panel had concluded that Goldman had deceived investors. Yet despite all that, the SEC just can't figure out how to find that any laws have been broken by Goldman here.

London-based Standard Chartered Bankagreed to pay $340million to settle New York state charges that it illegally funneled hundreds of billions of dollars to Iran, even as other probes by federal regulators are continuing.

New York’s Department of Financial Services surprised fellow regulators last week when it unveiled a blistering report accusing Standard Chartered of conspiring with Iran to launder $250billion from 2001 to 2007 to bypass U.S. economic sanctions.

Note that no criminal charges apply here, just a fine of $340 million (with an “m”) to settle up on a conspiracy where over $250 billion (with a “b”) was involved. Even the idea of ‘punitive’ seems to be beyond the grasp of current regulators and enforcers. Crime does pay and is virtually risk-free from a criminal perspective, but it has to be really big crime and it has to involve a bank.

Meanwhile, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is reportedly set to drop a four-year investigation (mainly held in private meetings) into silver manipulation, concluding -- surprise! -- that no such manipulation exists. Heading up the panel is ... wait for it ... wait for it ... Gary Gensler, a former Goldman executive.

Here we might not be overly impressed with the CFTC for having already missed both the MF Global and Peregrine Financial debacles that happened right under their ineffective regulatory noses, but the real damage is the constant erosion of faith in their obviously broken and sometimes crooked model that selectively enforces rules depending on whether or not the alleged miscreant is a very large institution.

Listen, it is really simple and has always been true: If someone can scam a market and make money, they will. Here's another potential example:

Motorists may have been paying too much for their petrol because banks andother traders are likely to have tried to manipulate oil prices in the same way they rigged interest rates, an official report has warned.

Concerns are growing about the reliability of oil prices, after a report for the G20 found the market is wide open to “manipulation or distortion”.

Traders from banks, oil companies or hedge funds have an “incentive” to distort the market and are likely to try to report false prices, it said.

Petrol retailers use oil price “benchmarks” to decide how much to pay for future supplies.

The rate is calculated by data companies based on submissions from firms which trade oil on a daily basis – such as banks, hedge funds and energy companies.

However, like Libor – the interest rate measure that Barclays was earlier this month found to have rigged – the market is unregulated and relies on the honesty of the firms to submit accurate data about all their trades.

I have no idea if or to what extent the oil markets have been manipulated, but given the fact that the system apparently relies to some degree on the “honesty of the firms to submit accurate data,” I will have to reiterate that anything that can be rigged for profit will be rigged for profit.

While we might gnash our teeth, or become enraged or depressed at this state of affairs and lack of accountability, I think it’s just as healthy to observe that it is what it is and plan accordingly.

In Part II: Protecting Your Wealth, we focus on the strategies and steps we as individuals can take to decrease our vulnerability to the dysfunction, manipulation, and sleight of hand discussed above. The positive reality here is that there are alternatives to playing the game in the casino by the casino's rules.

MARIKANA, South Africa (Reuters) - South African riot police opened fire on striking miners armed with machetes and sticks at Lonmin's Marikana platinum mine on Thursday, killing several men in the deadliest episode of a week of union violence.

Heavily armed officers backed by armoured vehicles were laying out barbed wire barricades when they were outflanked by some of the estimated 3,000 miners massed on a rocky outcrop near the mine, 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.

Police opened fire with automatic weapons on a group of men who burst out from behind a vehicle. The volley of bullets threw up clouds of dust, which cleared to reveal at least seven bodies lying on the ground, Reuters television footage showed.

I love how even Milton Bradley or whoever the fuck owns Monopoly these days has tried to add extra zeros and now they even have a version of the game that uses a swipe card instead of cash. The trouble is, the old games out there tell the tale.

Good for you. Probably showing grandma to suck eggs, but if you're thinking of starting a manufacturing enterprise, spread the load of your financial burden for capital and fixed costs. It's brave in this climate, but there are loads of people with cash who would be happy to partner up to do something productive (in all sense of the word) with their money. Get concessions from your local government on taxes, else you will start to feel like you are working flat out just to feed all of your profits to the politburo.

If you're in an enterprise just to accumulate stock, then you will very quickly run into cash flow problems, so if I were you, I would be concentrating hard on the production capacity of your light industrial enterprise, turnover and profitability instead of just hoping to get rich long term on a warehouse full of stuff. Good luck.

Love ZH but gotta say never been a fan of this Martenson guy. He's been saying the same thing over and over and over again for since 666 SPX. We get it, it's rigged. So why wouldn't you, with that information, stay in the "rigged" game and keep making money???

If you're gonna whine about it, at least profit from it and whine all the way to the bank.

Its not all about money. For some of us its about the hope that we might leave a better world for our children. Riding a trend to make money in an evil system makes you evil. So go make your money and burn in hell.

ericFrye has a similar rant up on The Daily Reckoning today: this line is pretty good donch think?

Wow!…It’s getting harder to hang a felony charge on a past or present Goldman exec than it is to hang panties on a porn star. The darn things just keep sliding off.

and his conclusion is slewie-friendly too [not only b/c it is free] about which assets to consider in this clusterflock of black swans in white hats doing god'sWerk for the propwashed, brainwashed jerk:

The list of such assets is very short…and most of them glisten in direct sunlight.

...speaking of glistening assets where holding the physical is mandatory...

No, I don't want to gtf out. I want our markets, economy and society back. I want our cities back. I want our environment back. I want a media that reports for ME on issues I find important. The problem is that people have given up voting for their interests for some sort of pie in the sky moral BS like America is going to get better if we prevent the gays from marrying. Wake the F up people. This country has been hijacked by fascists in BOTH parties. The overt fascists in the Republican party and the covert fascists in the Democratic party and they get truck loads of OUR money delivered to them at the end of every day.

There are two problems with the "start building them" thinking. One is that generations past built this country for ALL of us. That has been stolen. I want it back. The other is that once a successful market, economy, city whatever is actually built in stark contrast to the rest of America, it will be destroyed and violently. Why do you think the US continues to sanction Cuba?

I want to take back what has been stolen. I want people to go to jail for their crimes. That is the only way forward. Anything else, however noble, is doomed to fail. You can't avoid a conflict. It must be resolved.

Friend, I don't want to argue, and I am sympathetic with your feelings.

I'm going to give you a few responses, because I think you are a sincere person:

1. It ain't coming back. It will fail, spectacularly. The fiat system is a one-way game, and it has dragged everything else with it.

2. The real foundation of America was individuals with courage. Those people no longer really exist in the mainstream - they've been beaten out. They do, however, exist in the System D markets.

3. Black markets have been thriving in the US for a long time. Look at the illegal immigrants, they have been surviving quite decently, off the books. Look at Silk Road, look at the pot dealers in every town. No, I don't want to deal drugs, and I'm quite sure you don't either, but off-the-books can DEFINITELY be done. It IS being done every day.

The old way isn't coming back, but we can build a new way that is even better. The only hitch is that we have to ACT, rather than waiting for permission and jabbering.

You come across as an obstructionist leveraging communitarian rhetoric, a nay-saying populist waiting for someone else to do the dirty work.

Nope, sorry, this country is not "our land", its infrastructure and society were not built "for us". It was conquered by people with CH1's attitude, then colonized by people with CH1's attitude, then developed by people with CH1's attitude, and they did it all for their own personal gain - including leaving a better world for their posterity with each generation. The capitalist way, the free human being's way. And yes, toes were stepped on, skulls were smashed, eggshells were broken.

America continues to sanction Cuba to punish Cuba for defying America in its own backyard and for the Bay of Pigs humiliation, it is pure spite, you are implying that Cuba's economy would otherwise be successful if not for American meddlng, and that is utterly insane perfectly rational dialectical nonsense - blame the other guy. Sorry, Cuba failed with or without any American help, and despite Soviet help.

You think the courts will prosecute and convict and incarcerate the people who own the courts and the jails and the police and the judges and the guards? You're absolutely right the only way forward is conflict, we are in conflict and have been for many many years, but courts and trials and jails will have no part in it, they are part and parcel of the system. Taking back what was stolen is a phrase steeped in populism and envy.

It all must be destroyed before we can rebuild in the manner which befits a free people, but that starts with individuals abandoning the old system and preparing for the new, and that means, for each us, beginning to do it ourselves.

Had the people who built this country taken your attitude it would never have been built. They did not expend lifetimes of labor building their legacies for me and you, they did it for themselves, their families, and their communities. It was not "for all of us", that is communitarian propaganda intended to make you feel worthless, powerless, envious, entitled, and beholden to the past. What was stolen from all of us was the culture of productivity and honest labor, the protestant work ethic if you please. And the only way to take that back is by doing it - being productive.

I agree that the old system must fall, but we are not getting back what you consider stolen, and it was never really ours - it was a body of false promises made by the state made in exchange for claims on our lives and labor. That is not what I want back, that is what I want gone. And we are not getting it back, it was never real, it was the bait used to steal what was really ours - ourselves, our freedom, and our labor - the only things with real value and the only things they ever wanted to take from us.

PS: CH1, though we disagree on the inevitability of violence, you are one of the ones who "gets it"; Peace, freedom, and prosperity to you.

I will do the unthinkable at zero hedge and admit that I am a Black man in America.

I can't take back what was stolen from me anymore than you will be able to. The revenge you seek is from people dead and dying. Even though their decendents reap the benefits of my ancestors labor I do not seek to take back what was stolen from them. As God put it to me, you can seek to recover what was taken from you and your ancestors or you can build a future for you and your children.

If you build the proper future what was taken from you and your ancestors will not be necessary. If you seek to recover what you think was lost even if you recieve it what will your future be? What will your children's future be? You have focused on the past and not your ability to exist today.

Oh I would love to see those who profited from the slave trade suffer. They are dead. I would love to see those who profited from the funds of the slave trade give it to those who are the decendents. My fear is the slick involved in the transaction would eventually turn it back to those individuals anyway in most cases.

What are my best opportunities now? What are my families best opportunities? Teach them their histroy so they don't fall pray to the same system that hurt their ancestors. But most important teach them they have no boundaries. Teach them they control their destiny no matter what evil is in the world. Teach them that truth is they must remain diligent against scams. But most importantly they must learn to adjust to ever changing versions of the same scam. Money is a means not an end.

Bah, the world is full of black or white or yellow slaves, slave tribes, slave nations. They get over it, evenutally. This is a never ending circle, we think we can learn and prevent it from happening but here we are, another page of history is to be turned and .. (Drumm rolll) we have another facist (call it nazi or communist) government. Bah.

Just got back from a flight on which I watched the movie PyraMMMida, a completely over-the-top portrayal of a massive pyramid scheme, based on an actual scam which operated in Russia in the 1990s. Fascinating, in a train-wreck sort of way...

gain/loss by what metric? there is the
story, not in cherry picking satifying
time frames to come up with contextually
false statistics. look at this.
.
KEISER: Sandeep, I wanted to get you back on because you tweeted recently and I quote, “If it ain’t Menger or his direct student Eugene Von BB, it ain’t Austrian. Sorry #Mises : respectfully, too many mistakes were made.” Now the reason I wanted you to comment on this is that many Americans consider themselves Austrian school libertarians, but most will be following Mises. What are his mistakes?

JAITLY: I think his mistake are probably too great to elaborate on sort of on the show, but essentially Mises didn’t look back to Menger’s original axiom which was that value is not outside of your own consciousness. And he didn’t observe what Menger observed about market action in the sense that there are always two prices, there’s a bid and an offer. And von Mises didn’t like to admit that interest was a market phenomenon. He sort of wanted to imply that it’s a sort of natural consequence of not having a present good basically. So to develop a theory of interest without going back to Menger’s original observations is not continuing the tradition in the Austrian way as we would see it. It’s not insulting or denigrating what von Mises has done. He was certainly the greatest economists of the twentieth century. It’s just that he made a slight, few errors of observation. That’s all.

KEISER: Well, the reason why this is interesting and I’m bringing it up here is that this idea that value does not exist outside of mankind’s consciousness, this is pretty much the opposite of objectivism which is Ayn Rand’s philosophy . . .

JAITLY: Well, respectively, Dr. Bernanke is wrong in that regard. But he’s not unique by any measure. Money is the universally acceptable ultimate extinguisher of any debt and, as far as I can tell, fiat credit which is the system that we have currently, doesn’t fit that bill. Throughout time, the universally accepted extinguisher of any debt has always been . . . ultimate extinguisher I should add . . . has always been gold or silver. Nothing else. That is the definition of money. So it doesn’t take much thought to realise that Dr. Bernanke is wrong. Plain and simple. He’s wrong.

KEISER: Alright, so we have clear evidence of this because the US has a debt problem and Ben Bernanke’s solution over there at the Fed is to adjust monetary policy, attempting to extinguish the debt not with gold and silver but with more debt.

JAITLY: Yes.

KEISER: What he’s doing cannot be considered money.

JAITLY No. No. Not at all. You can’t extinguish credit by issuing more credit. You just end up with a larger amount of credit outstanding. I don’t know whether Dr. Bernanke realises this in the back of his head – I’m sure he does, he’s not a dumb individual – but the consequences of what he’s doing, I don’t think he does realise, or, in fact, any country that’s monetising their debt to this degree. They do not realise the consequences of they’re doing and there will be nothing that they can do once everything starts kicking off, once everything starts spinning. What I want to make very clear Max is that you don’t need marginal quantitative easing from here for asset prices to start escalating. You only need what has already been printed to start spinning more quickly. And once things start spinning, nothing can slow it down. No central bank will be able to slow it down without sending the whole world economy into the second dark ages.
.
[KR328] Keiser Report: Frankenmarkets and Austrian Economics
Posted on August 16, 2012 by stacyherberthttp://maxkeiser.com/2012/08/16/kr328-keiser-report-frankenmarket/

Speaking of cherry picking contextually false statistics vs truth, an ounce of gold could in theory buy a downtown commercial block of Berlin in 1923.

None actually did, not because people did not have the ounces of gold, but because no one would sell for an ounce of gold.

Just like the Shoah Spielberg German Jewish lady who thought diamonds would buy her freedom from Camp and had to keep swallowing them and digging them out of her feces and reswallowing to keep them from being stolen.

you make a good point but i don't know
about there being an end of story nor
can i calculate numbers of angels.
see reflexivity and consciousness down
the thread. same as putting your faith in...
different words, same idea ? but one thing
is for sure, when the debts come due the creditors
will accept something that extinguishes those
debts IN THEIR MINDS. that might be more
debt at the right price or it might be a physical asset they find satisfactory, but then again
the debts might be deemed fraudulently or
partially fraudulently induced and
become worth-less? to the significant market
participants.
staying away from the death bed and absolute
end of story consideration for the purpose
of evaluating near term and relative probabilities.
anyway, best to you !

You are quite right B'man American monetary history was that dollars were backed by gold, silver, copper, Income or Whiskey taxes heretofore, which paid off defaulted debts like the Continental and Greenbacks, from Hamilton to Lincoln to FDR and even JFK.

Since JFK and Nixon, Constitutional sound money was replaced by Fed usury fiat, with credit inflation haircuts (ie theft) the norm since the debt exceeded the ability to repay it, soon the ability to service it.

Every 7 and 50 years since Deuteronomy and Leviticus we had a debt Sabbatical or Jubilee forgiveness or repayment and are way overdue.

Ron Paul gave it a good shot and the proxy Banker Corp Owners used their MSM to steamroll him three times after robbing Americans by force with government 1984 endless wars, TARP, 0Care, Shovel Ready and "You didn't do it yourself" (So you can't keep it) claims.

So now, when/if credit finally collapses, people holding gold and silver physical that went up 50+ times since people began collecting gold coins for $20 and silver dollars for a buck, may be shocked as they were before in the time periods mentioned.

No one really knows how, when or where, so best wishes to you and the red checkers too...;

ok, who are the red checkers?
.
if all the markets are manipulated and
you have no choice but to exist in one
do you want to be in the one that has been rigged
up or the one that has been rigged down?
measured in rigged and plastic, out of thin
air units. and not just out of the air units
but out of thin air units that need to get
even more plentiful and be created out of
even thinner air just to see the sunrise?
.
Are the Day Trading HFT Algos Literally the Only Ones Left in the Silver Market??
Posted on August 16, 2012 by The Doc
.http://maxkeiser.com/2012/08/16/are-day-trading-hft-algos-literally-only...
.
i don't link these things and say these things
to be popular, i can tell you it has not brought
about that result in the past.

bacon as a book mark is just wrong but she
makes some good points for a crazy person.
she is in a zone brought about by trauma and
the resulting shock which has crystallized
her personal clarity but which could easily
lead to a horrible and endless war if she had
her way. but still, she makes some good points.

"..In other words, they’ll take on somebody like Raj Rajaratnam, who stacked his illegal insider trades so brazenly and carelessly that his case almost reads like a finance version of Jeff Dahmer tripping over bodies in his Milwaukee apartment. Or they’ll pursue Bernie Madoff on the tenth or eleventh time he crosses their desk, after years of nonaction, and after he breaks down weeping and confessing. Basically, if someone backs a dump truck up to the DOJ and unloads the entire case, gift-wrapped, a contrite and confessing criminal included, a guy like Eric Holder might, after much agonizing deliberation, decide to prosecute."
..m.t.

But here’s the thing: most of the crimes Wall Street people commit involve highly specific, highly individualized transactions that won’t fit Eric Holder’s bag of cookie-cutter statutory definitions. That is not the same thing as saying they’re not crimes. They are: the crimes of the crisis period were and are very basic crimes like fraud, theft, perjury, and tax evasion, only they’re dressed up in millions of pages of camouflaging verbiage.

Or, even more often, the crimes have also been sanctified in advance by “reputable” law and accounting firms, who (for huge fees) offered their clients opinions that, if X and Y are signed in accordance with Z, and A and B are stipulated by the parties, and everyone’s sitting Indian-style and facing the moon when the deal is agreed to, then it’s not fucked up and illegal when Goldman Sachs tells you it’s a co-investor in your deal when it’s actually got $2 billion bet against you.

You know that look a dog gives you when you show it something confusing, like an electric razor or a lawn sprinkler? That’s the look federal prosecutors give when companies like Goldman wave their attorneys’ sanctifying opinions at them. They scratch their heads and say: “Oh, wow, well since this was signed in Australia by three millionaire lawyers wearing magic invisibility cloaks, it really isn’t fraud! They’re right!”

In this context, it is amazing how we watch the S&P climb higher and higher everyday, yet the real economy has shown very little progress in the past few years. Since the S&P lows of 2009, S&P revenues are up about 2-3%.

whats amazing about it? its enabled by a president whos a fraud. So why not enable a fraud so the fraud can get re elected. Hes allowing this . He can easily say enough is enough but since hes failed to do his job this is what you get. They know we know it and every day its like they say "yea so you know were a fraud what are you gonna do about it?

After doing a thorough analysis using OHLC charts overlaying Elliott wave principle, Fibonacci ratios, momentum rate, the 200 and 50 DMA, and resistance break out trending I have come to the conclusion that the in-depth analyses just preformed is for SHIT because the market is counterfeit!

Absolutely worthless paper money, not backed by anything but affording a very generous and luxurious lifestyle for a few elite people who have built themselves an empire with propaganda, illusion and imperialistic wars.

The US is the wealthiest nation for that very reason. There is no special favor or blessing from God on this country. The US isn't better organized or economically stronger than the rest. But the US has enforced and imposed their currency on the world as the reserve currency!

Who invented the USD in its current form and who is benefitting to this date more than anyone else?

This is no longer a conspiracy theory when the facts are so blatantly obvious.

Great interview with Ann Barnhardt by The Doc explaining how officially supported the fraud really is. The Fascist Pigs are in the final stage of their plan, making sure they have total control over YOUR money before the system implodes... Best advice is at 19:30 "Be as nimble and removed from the system as humanly possible"

Does anyone have an updated list of banksters, their positions, crimes, and their regulators? A list would be helpful for the guillotine manufacturers and distributors. It can be a real logistical nightmare to get the equipment in the right places, get the music and side entertainment set up, and order all the party streamers, head-catching buckets, mops for blood, et cetera on time.

Seriously, I like to see a comprehensive list (yearbook?) of pics and names and related info for each bankster so I can discuss all this with my friends. Too many of us refer to the banksters as "they" instead of by their names and titles.

most "columnists and writers" don't even understand the bankstering laws and their recent changes under dodd/frank which takes some power from the FED to "monetize" certain bullshit "assets" but also gives the FED sweeping new regulatory powers

people like you should study/work harder figuring things out for themselves; why? b/c as you are realizing [at some level it appears] that you are not clear about "banksters" even tho you are a zeroHead

the "writers" don't fuking get it! or, idf they do, they want to pretend they don't b/c of "clients" or 'investments" or "endowments" or "trusts" or politics or that is just their damned JOB to write what the UBS or CITI or luf-J or g/sachs of the jpMorgue want them to write and if they step out line ine fuking inch they won't have it (their job) next week

the FED asswipes are among the worst offenders too; a baker's dozen sources of data, bullshit, and smoke&mirrors :> disinfotril trolls <: the cops have the best drugs but the FED has the fab fibbers of fiat

tyler keeps testing the clones here with the FED-speak disinfo, the NYTimes, & daBoyz the FED "wouldn't dare go against, evah!" but almost everybody just keeps falling for it and telling their friends too, while complaining about how sleeping sheep just won't wake up like they have

you seem like another basically good person who thinks "individualtion" is a group process w/ yer friends&family

but please do enjoy the commonest trap of all: groupthink!

passing out helpful lists? ...priceless!

try this: study the new bankstering law [dodd/frank] for yourself for a few hours yourself using various search engines; pay attention to what the law school reviews say

in reality, the S&P 500 has, up til today at least, been the place to be for the year to date. gold is flat dead even, bonds have given alot back. so, mainpulated or not, i'll stay with my longs until ZH runs a positive piece on equities. as far as central banks being net buyers of gold, not sure if that's a plus or minus given they were net sellers at the low. of course, this could all change tomorrow in today's environment. still pays to hedge your bet no matter what you think is going to happen, because-it might not. that's why i own some gold

If you have morals and convictions and the money to do something to restore any semblance of order and discipline, you can afford to fund a paramilitary group. Then organize a junta, take over the country and throw all these crookster's asses in jail.

Failing that, there's always the conversion of fraudster's currency into real currency. Waiting and praying for the day that someone with the cash and the cajones is going to change the status quo.

Gold is attractive in the short run, but the things of value that will last are 1) land, and 2) low production-cost commodities that will be able to be sold abroad. Personally, I am carving out a niche in number 2.

The current system of closing out criminal cases is exactly the way I would structure a completely corrupt system. Libor should be settled in the current fashion and get closed out. If they want to show us the system still works, a couple of low level traders will get thrown under the bus.

I see a time in the future, there will be instances where large financial corporations, "in the club", will preemptively seek out regulators. They will turn themselves in and offer up wrists for slapping and a few lowbies for crucifying. It allows them to lock in profits, pay a nominal fine and most importantly, remove the double indemnity and evade the actual rule of law. If this happens they are going to use the favorable enviroment to clean house and expect a major change in the enviroment to happen relatively soon. Just need buy a couple law changes and a few legal decisions on the civil side to remove any bits of justice that still remain to close the loop.

It seems the current political, social and economic trends indicate that in the near future some shit is going to get broken and some people are going to be hurt.

I realized a few years ago that Im on my own in this game. You are too. I expect nothing from anyone and have planned and prepped to give myself (and my children) the best chance at survival, success and prosperity without depending on the system to do it.

Of course, we will be outnumbered by the zombies, which sucks, but being a zombie provides zero chance of survival, success and prosperity.

I hope I live long enough to write a book about the collapse of the worlds super power (its part of my plan for prosperity).

in a dualistic world it is all about
reflexivity and consciousness.
so there
get to work, look it up,
" for this u have the internet. " mr. panos
.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory)
etc.

Thanks, blindman, for your video link today to Israeli ethnic Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State, and her infamous claim that the “price” of 500,000 dead Iraqi children in return for U.S. sanctions on Iraq was worth it.

Martenson is baring his political and moral stripes in this reach to side with sanctions on Iran in an otherwise excellent article.

Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com sees the case differently:

“While speaking truth to power is not the sort of thing one expects the executive of a leading bank to indulge in, we’ll take it where we can find it. Here‘s the Group Director of the Standard Chartered Bank responding to the charges, leveled by New York State bank regulator Ben Lawsky, that SCB was involved in financial dealings with Iran to the tune of $250 billion:

"You f—king Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with the Iranians?"

Continued Raimondo in New York Declares War on Iran:There is plenty of evidence this case has little to do with the sanctions, and more to do with bank protectionism: SCB is a British bank, and the city of New York is now engaged in a strenuous campaign to lure the high finance crowd away from London and back to the Big Rotten Apple. The Group Manager, who goes unnamed in the complaint, is asking the right question, which apparently Senor Lawsky isn’t prepared to answer – so I will.

“We think we’re the center of the world: that’s what "American exceptionalism" is all about. Let’s say the Russian government decided that no one was to trade with, say, Italy, and the Duma passed legislation mandating economic sanctions. No one would pay the least amount of attention, except to mock the pretensions of the wounded Russian bear. When we do it, however, everyone is supposed to sit up and take notice. And of course they do: after all, the US is the epicenter of world financial markets, and New York is …well, where Wall Street is located. So the New York Department of Financial Services can act as if it’s the agency of a sovereign government, which in a very real sense it is. Aside from having one of the highest tax rates in the country, and aspiring to regulate the caloric intake of some of its residents, New York officials have lately moved to extend their reach internationally…

I heard someone say "put your money in a house...it's safer then the market." That may not be true. With an eye-scorching number of title defects and fraud in title closings and conveyances, more and more problems are popping up such as former owners showing up to evict the currenct owners claiming improper transfer of title and that in fact they still own the place.

I would be especially careful with short sales and foreclosure properties and suggest a RE lawyer to look over the papers. Also, ask him for a "litigation opinion" as well as the usual title check just in case because a legal mess down the road can cost you a hundred grand easily these days. RE may be as risky if not more so then equities.

As for those who say "Title Insurance' covers it....better guess again. Ask your RE lawyer about that one.

To the Bolshevik mindset, nothing is unthinkable. They took unawares homeowners, savers, retirees, and wage earners. The common good in mankind never entertained a thought, never dreamed, the Fed and its band of investment bankers would steal the very shirts off their backs. They never understood that these people would never stop; that they’d never have enough, that there is no “too far” to which these people won’t go…even if it means taking your home. They go where the money is, or what's left of it.

Prior to Proposition 13 in California, a measure put on by grassroots taxpayers to harness runaway property taxes, the state authorities had absolutely no concern with the misery that skyrocketing property taxes were causing.For one thing, there was a substantial increase in the number of homes owned by seniors and others being confiscated by the authorities to pay for the property taxes they could no longer afford - already exorbitant taxes that in many cases had doubled and tripled statewide in the space of mere months.

When the citizens of California faced this crisis, the state, county and municipal officials along with public unions and the majority of state politicians turned their back on them and poured huge contributions into the war chest to stop this citizen uprising.

It became clear they would never stop, that these officials and their supporters would never, never stop until thousands and thousands of homes were confiscated to pay for the special interests budgets and payrolls of public officials.

This confiscation is the common characteristic of tyrants, such as the banker tyrants, who when they take authority will never stop until they crush their opponent.

Any physical commodity that might become scarce when the market ceases to distribute correctly (which we all know will happen at some point.) is better than manipulated paper. I've also thrown some Benjamins at bitcoin just to add diversity to the physical holds.

seems to me it might be if it weren't
utterly dependent on the very thing
that is beyond its control and in the hands
of the very people it seeks protection from,
but i really don't know much about it.
bitcoin ?

It's a network protocol that's been monetized more quickly than http, smtp or any of the other protocols that a bunch of geeks made and used for a few years until the rest of the world figured out what they were doing.

It can be frozen if the entire internet stops working, but I have physcial control of the private keys on a USB stick.

Banks also lose value if their networks die.

I bought bitcoins with the assumption that the net will be fucntioning in some form or another. If the net stops working, we'll have bigger problems than $1k in bitcoins not being able to be moved across the network.